Settle Down
by Rachel C. Astrid
Summary: Now that Rick has saved his daughter, Kate will do whatever it takes to make this place his home again. M for language and lovin'. Post-ep for 5x16 "Hunt" by request of the lovely purplangel. A Hurt/Comfort Romance with a pinch of Angst and a smidgen of Humor.


**Settle Down**

By Rachel C. Astrid

Summary: Now that Rick has saved his daughter, Kate will do whatever it takes to make this place his home again. M for language and lovin'. Post-ep for 5x16 "Hunt" by request of the lovely purplangel.

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Romance (with a pinch of Angst and a smidgen of Humor)

* * *

"_Hold on to me as we go,  
__As we roll down this unfamiliar road.  
__And although this wave is stringing us along,  
__Just know you're not alone,  
_'_Cause I'm gonna make this place your home.  
__Settle down; it'll all be clear.  
__Don't pay no mind to the demons;  
__They fill you with fear.  
__The trouble, it might drag you down.  
__If you get lost, you can always be found.  
__Just know you're not alone,  
_'_Cause I'm gonna make this place your home."__  
_

-Phillip Phillips

* * *

It's over, and besides the relief and the gratitude all she can feel is that, even now, there may very well be nothing she can do to fix this whole thing, to free him of the immense burden that these endless days have placed on his shoulders and in his eyes. If this nightmarish experience has taught her anything, it's that her power and her heroism have their limits and that there are just some things that her determination and no small amount of love actually cannot conquer.

Because for hours, for _days_, every breath and beat of her heart said _I will not give up _and _we love her too much for this to end any other way _and even _I love him too much for this to end any other way._ Yet, despite their every effort, she'd watched as each minute destroyed him a little more; proved her determination and love a little less sufficient.

_Don't promise, unless you can do it, because I'd never forgive you _hangs over her like the shadow of a storm. She understands, she does—of all people, she understands. But still it looms; aches.

Kate stands just outside Alexis' bedroom door, having said her own good-night. Staying close, she leaves the little clan of three to hold one another and feel for a moment what everything was like one whirlwind year ago, before Alexis ventured out, as any grown child should do; went out into a world that might have swallowed her in the name of settling a score.

The young woman in her childhood bed begins to drift off in her grandmother's embrace, weary but safe at last. Martha holds her, clearly savoring the reassuring warmth of having her close; strokes her hair out of her face. She glances to her son, keeping vigil at Alexis' other side. "Richard," she says softly, "you should rest." After no more than a moment she answers the unspoken question in his eyes: "I'll stay." She looks pointedly to the doorway where Kate stands, waiting for him, and he nods his assent.

And she's so grateful she could cry, because although she would never deny him a second with his family, she's just not sure how much longer she can wait to hold him again.

* * *

All he can think about is being inside her, being so close to her that they are essentially indistinguishable one from the other.

Rick closes the bedroom door behind them, and if there's any doubt in Kate's mind about what they're going to do before calling it a night, he erases it with messy kisses down her neck and frenetic grasps at her clothing. Her deft fingers save the beige blazer and the white turtleneck in time, but he's not sure now if the sounds he's barely registering mean that he's ripping her delicate bra—and—Was that the button on her pants hitting the floor? Was it still attached to the pants? He doesn't know. He doesn't care. Clothes can be replaced. They all have too many clothes. People cannot be replaced. People can never be replaced. God, why is he still not inside her?

She's trying to work with him, he realizes; trying to help him shed his pants and boxers and he _knows _he just tore his own shirt. Kate's apologizing like it's her fault and he's murmuring something into her mouth that he can't be bothered to enunciate because pretty much everything he really wants to tell her is about to be expressed below the waist.

_I need you. I know I went rogue. I had to go. I'm sorry I made you worry. Please forgive me. I need you. I will never stop needing you._

Eagerly he fingers her; finds her swollen with desire or whatever they can call this terrible, mutual need in the midst of their tragedy and triumph. All he knows is that the tragedy is supposed to be over already, but he's still so overwrought with the magnitude of it that the triumph hasn't entirely set in yet. And he hates to think about coming home to fuck Kate like a sign of triumph because, for all of his years of patience and longing, she has _never _been just another one of his conquests, but damn it, he just needs to be inside her, and maybe when he finally is, everything will feel right again.

He doesn't dare break their kiss, but she gasps against him as he lifts her ass and lowers her back onto their bed—it stopped being _his _long ago now—and he buries his cock inside her where she is warm and wet and waiting for him. He supports his weight above her, just close enough that she should be able to feel his body heat, and gives her about half a second to adjust to his length before he starts to move, because even though this hasn't solved everything, it's definitely an improvement. Until—

"Oh, shit," he groans, momentarily collapsing over her. "Shit. Fuck. Shit."

"What?" Kate tries to run her palm down his cheek, but he's already sliding out of her, leaning away from her and further up the bed.

He reaches into the drawer of the nightstand and easily finds a foil square. But there's a maelstrom in his gut and he's pretty sure it's not just regret for not using a condom for all of three or four thrusts. He knows that she's on the pill and that she's meticulous about her personal health. He knows that they use both forms of protection because one of the few things they've established outright, if still a bit ambiguously, is that neither of them is _ready for that right now_ and because using both means that they're each assuming responsibility.

But fuck if he could just go one day this week without feeling like he's failing somebody he loves.

And it's the sliver of an idea of also failing somebody who doesn't even exist yet that does him in; makes his throat dry, makes him choke. Somebody who doesn't exist yet, but somebody he's going to love because he already knows that immediate, inexplicable, parental love and because he already knows the boundlessness of his love for Kate.

And then it's the idea that he can never, ever take that risk; be _that _vulnerable; let another little innocent life into a world that he's come to see in a different light. A lifetime of optimism is no match for the fear that seizes him now; makes hot tears well up in his eyes before he can stop them.

"Castle," she whispers fiercely, sitting up, her naked figure aglow even in the dimness. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He wants to confess to her, confess how _easy _he's had it. That he'd never really lost anyone very close to him before Montgomery; how that was like losing one of the few father-figures he'd ever had, and yet not nearly comparable to the trauma and loss that Roy's own kids surely experienced, that Kate experienced both with the captain and with her mother. He knows it's not right to compare notes, tally points; that every loss is uniquely tragic, but he can't help but remember how he'd once managed to rationalize that it's somehow less difficult to come to grips with the death of a good man who made some wrong turns before finally redeeming himself than the unexpected death of a total innocent.

He can't help but remember that watching Kate flat-line in the ambulance was impossibly more difficult than anything he'd ever known. Hell, enduring the loss of Kate in his daily life, even once he knew she was safe and healing on her own somewhere, was as terrible as just about any death he could imagine.

And then he can't help but realize that the anguished man who approached the bloodshed in the back of the kidnappers' van would not even have been able to wake to another day had the blood test yielded different results.

Throughout this living nightmare, he's been _reliving_ the terror of the moment that he'd gotten distracted trying on hats in a department store only to discover that his little Alexis was missing; had gotten bored and fallen asleep beneath a clothing rack. He's been reliving that terror except that this time, he's berating himself over and over again not for getting distracted but for getting complacent, for allowing himself to be lulled into a false sense of security, for believing for even a second that his baby could be unharmed in the world as he's come to know it.

What will it take for him to learn that this isn't one of his books, and he doesn't get to decide who gets a happy ending? When will he learn that authoring one's own life has its limits, and rewrites are not so freely given?

Kate's still waiting on him, always waiting on him, just as patiently as ever he waited on her. Her silent presence brings him back to where they are from where his mind has taken him.

When he can finally speak, the words stutter in counterpoint to his pounding heart. "I just—I don't want to hurt—like that again."

* * *

She hears him, really hears him; hears herself in him. She hears the remnants of a memory of their conversation on the swings, when she tried to find a way to tell him that she wanted to let him in but that there was a reason she had kept him—everyone—out. "Rick." Her voice is gentle and nevertheless strong, much stronger than the brokenness she bared before she learned this lesson herself, before she put in the time and did the work. "Don't let this build your wall." She lowers her head and raises her eyes to meet his. She kisses his temple and repeats herself because she knows that once a wall starts going up, words alone can only go so far. "Do _not _let this build your wall."

She takes the little package from his trembling fingers; sets it on the bedside table.

"Lie down," she commands, her voice authoritative without harshness. She directs him onto his stomach, moves the pillows so his head is turned to the side and flat on the bed, and stretches his arms alongside his torso, palms facing upward near his thighs.

She reaches for a small bottle on the nightstand and lightly lathers her hands with lotion; the herbal scent fills the sex-laden air. Tenderly, she massages him, digging her fingertips and the heels of her hands into his broad shoulders and the smooth expanse of his back; focuses her attention there but moves on to his neck and ass and arms and legs, massaging just deeply enough to work out some of the knots but hopefully not so deeply that he'll be sore tomorrow.

Early on, he murmurs something, the question muffled in tears or mattress, she can't be entirely sure: "Why are you doing this?" It's not suspicious or accusatory or ungrateful; in fact, she can hear a groan of gratitude and pleasure as he says it. Just somehow unsure, or confused, like he doesn't know what he's done to deserve it.

She doesn't answer him; only shushes him gently and continues to love on him with her hands.

Because that's exactly it. She does it because an ever-growing part of her wants to tell him _I love you_, but she doesn't want yet another verbal declaration of love between them to come at such a dramatic, painful time. And she already knows that it will overwhelm her to say it out loud; she certainly can't bear to say it anytime soon, while they are both already immersed in more than they can process. So she declares it one more time without words. Words were never really her M.O., anyway.

She does it because once you love someone's soul, loving his body is that much more sacred—whether it's making love to him, or massaging his aches and pains, or tending to him in illness and age. She hasn't admitted it yet, but it no longer scares her to imagine growing old with Richard Castle. She knows that he has ten years on her and that no matter how childish and playful he is—always will be—someday that decade is going to show in how he walks and talks and remembers. She hasn't even said _I love you_, and already, every fear she's ever had about unrequited love and heartbrokenness and finding her _one-and-done _is melting instead into the too-simple fear that something will happen to one or both of them before they have the opportunity to grow old.

And she does it because she knows that she can't ease all of his heartaches or quell all of his fears, but there are still a few ways that she can offer him some kind of release to rid his limbs of the taut tension that holds him captive. With every day, every night that they share together, she's becoming increasingly adept at gauging when the best thing she can do for him is to hold him or massage him or suck him or take him or let him take her.

Tonight, she knows that he wanted her, wanted to take her, wanted to pound into her and claim her with all of the intensity of his surging adrenaline. The exhaustion and the anxiety and the emotional gravity of the past few days have simply caught up with him. Now that he has broken down and succumbed to the inner turmoil, the last thing she wants is for him to think that there's anything wrong with that. That somehow being tired or afraid or sad should make him any less of a man, any less of a lover—because the truth of the matter is that she has never known him so deeply, respected him so completely, as she does in this moment; his humanity is beautiful and profound, and even though she would give anything for his laughter and assured happiness, she can't help but see how simply remarkable it is to share all of these things, all of this _life_, with this man beside her.

So she leans down to kiss along his spine; his ass; the backs of his thighs. She runs her fingers over his scalp and prompts him to turn over, onto his back, so she can cup his jaw in both hands and soothe his quiet weeping with a reassuring dance of lips and tongues. She kneels beside him on the bed, scrapes her nails lightly down his chest, and reaches for the package on the nightstand.

He's already hard and erect, but she gives him a loving squeeze and massages his balls, humming against him and warming his growing length with her mouth. When she finally unrolls the condom onto his cock, she straddles him and teases herself until her own arousal coats him with yet another layer and the scent of sex once again pervades the bedroom. He brushes her hair from her face, but she's the one making eye contact, telling him to open his eyes and watch them. As soon as he meets her stare, she sheathes him inside herself.

* * *

She moves above him like an angel of mercy and he's overcome with the need to touch every part of her; reaches for her breasts, pinching them and massaging them until she groans deliciously and cants forward enough that he can take one into his mouth. He grasps her hips but does his best to let her control her lifts and rotations and the pull of her pelvic muscles—however much is actually voluntary—and then he can't stand to see her forehead creased and her limbs twitching for naught. He slips one hand to her clit and trigger-fingers her until the spasms shake her from her core, pulling him along for the ride.

The only thing better than being inside her is being inside her while her body tightens and pulses around him, sucking him deeper as he comes.

In the morning, when he wakes, their heads are sharing a single pillow and their bodies are wrapped together in their continued need to be close. Rick figures if they could see themselves from any other point of view, they'd look like the curl of licorice or DNA or two tree trunks twisted into one. But all he can see is the top of Kate's head, the tip of her nose, and her naked curves fused to his.

He hears noises from the kitchen—no voices, only clattering—and deduces that his mother must be getting started on breakfast and Alexis must still be asleep. If that's the case, he doesn't want to disturb her before she's as rested and ready for the day as possible. So he tightens his hold on Kate's taut back and presses her to himself, her breasts gently rising and falling against his own chest as she wakes.

"Thank you," he murmurs into the tousled hair at her temple.

She makes like she's going to get up; starts untangling her sweaty skin from his.

"Not yet," he hums. "Still time."

"I hear someone in the kitchen. Thought I'd lend a hand," she explains, extricating herself and standing at the bedside.

He sighs at the loss of her, pulls a blanket around himself even though it isn't nearly the same as nestling against Kate's soft warmth. "My mother will be fine," he assures her. "She made that _Welcome Home_ breakfast for us yesterday, remember?"

"All right," she says, nodding her head to herself and smiling guiltily. "I wasn't going to say anything, but—well, I fixed the pancakes."

"You fixed the—oh." At this point, he catches on, but just to clarify: "You mean you told her how to make them?"

"No," she says slowly, "I mean I snuck up behind her and fixed the batter while she was busy."

He's always so careful to make Kate feel at home at the loft, especially now that they're trading out drawers and closet space to each other. It hadn't occurred to him how quickly, how seamlessly Kate has come to make the loft more of a home to him.

"Well, then," he replies, eyes shining with bemusement, "I guess you'd better get out there soon."

She leaves the sanctuary of the bed and heads to the bathroom to wash up and do what she can to look less like she's thoroughly sexed.

There are surprisingly few girly-products inundating what is unequivocally _their _bathroom, but after his time away, Rick's already looking forward to reacquainting himself with the array of fragrances that give Kate her sweet, familiar scent. It's going to be hard not to try to convince her to take a detour on her way out to rescue breakfast.

Rick leans back in bed and laughs to himself at the imagery of Kate stalking around their kitchen like some kind of Breakfast Ninja. It wouldn't be the first time. He's sure it won't be the last.

"Castle," she says, suddenly stepping out of the bathroom, casually holding a towel in front of her as though he hasn't seen _her stuff_. But her smile bares everything to him. "I'm really glad you're home."

And he knows that's where he is.

/


End file.
